The preferred embodiment concerns a method, a computer program and a device for generation of individualized and in particular personalized media print copies such as, for example, personalized newspapers.
Newspapers and magazines have previously predominantly been generated as mass printed matters with editions of at least multiple tens of thousands of copies. The readers of the newspaper thereby respectively receive in the same manner all information of the newspaper that is provided by the editorial department. With the arrival of digital printing technology, in particular what is known as print-on-demand printing, the idea has become more and more established to generate customer-specific, individualized print copies of media titles in which only specific, individual information selected by or from the reader are delivered to the reader from a plurality of items of information prepared by the editorial department.
A method for generation of individualized newspapers is known from the publication “Jeder sein Chefredakteur”, Technology Review—Das M.I.T.—Magazin für Innovation, Nils Schiffhauer, Heise Zeitschriften Verlag, Hannover, December 2004 and DE-A-101 61 684.
From WO-A1-03/054783 it is known for computer-aided generation of newspaper pages to send corresponding files per page from an editing computer directly to a receiving computer of a printing center immediately after the finalization of the pages at the editing computer, and there at the printing center to begin with the imposition of the pages immediately after arrival of all page files of a signature.
A method for what is known as imposition of print data to be printed per page is known from WO-A-00/68877, which method enables a plurality of pages to be printed together on one medium and the medium to be folded once or multiple times, wherein the print data are re-sorted per page in the imposition process before the printing process so that they come to lie in the correct sequence of the page numbers after the printing and folding.
Digital printing technologies (in particular electrography, including magnetography as well as inkjet technology) that are suitable for printing of individualized documents are described from the publication “Digitaldruck, Technik und Drucktechnologien der Océ Drucksysteme”, Océ Printing Systems GmbH, 9th Edition, February 2005, ISBN 3-00-001019-X, in particular in the chapters 4.3 and 5.
A method, receiving server and a computer program module for automated acceptance and relaying of digital document processing jobs in a print production system are described in WO-A2-03/065197.
A method for resorting a print data stream according to predetermined criteria, such as document-individual postal codes of addressees that are contained in the documents of the print data stream, for example, is known from WO-A2-01/77807, whereby the printed documents can be time- and cost-effectively processed further in a logistics or delivery process.
A uniform specification that is designated as a job definition format (JDF) was developed as an industry standard for cross-system control of document processing processes, for example from the generation of the document up to the delivery of a printed and packaged document. There is a corresponding job notification format (job messaging format or, respectively, JMF) for this that is correspondingly specified. The specification of JDF can be downloaded from the Internet site www.cip4.org; the current specification at the point in time of the present patent application is JDF Specification Release 1.2.
The publications cited above are herewith incorporated by reference into the present specification.